Carrying Too Much Stress?

Maybe your body can help.

There’s a lot of talk about spiritual practices, especially prayer and meditation, that can help us deal with stress.

But there’s another approach that might help — connecting with our bodies.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Leah Weiss of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Hope Lab, recommends some things to help us become anchored in our bodies, as a way of dealing with work related stress. She recommends things like paying attention to a single intentional breath, noting our physical response to stressful situations, and magnifying small, physical pleasures — like the first sip of coffee.

There are other practices, of course, that involve paying attention to the experience of our bodies; we can go for a long walk, participate in an athletic activity, or engage in a long period of meditation . But with these three practices in particular, the emphasis seems to be on very quick, intentional practices. Maybe these are more suited to our work lives, or at least to those situations when we do not have time to anything else.